Authors: Tereska Torres
When Ursula told me about all this, there was one thing that appeared to have touched her most. Michel spoke to her as an adult, she said, as a person with whom one could discuss anything at all, and Ursula felt proud that so intelligent a young man should consider her worthy of listening to all his ideas and projects. She was happy that Michel didn't resent her because of that other time when she had run away, and she was glad that he didn't speak of it.
He took her home to Down Street and said good night, lifting his black eyes toward her, profound and filled with gentleness.
Suddenly Ursula recalled her early days in Down Street, her disgust at all the vulgarity in the house, and she recalled her life during these last three years, with all its sordid aspects. There was the fireside scene with Claude and Mickey, and her experience with Philippe, arid her fear of not being normal, and there were the gray days under the demonic smile of the Ambassador of Peru. She remembered one night when she had come home and plunged her face in the washbasin, trying to wash everything from it as though she could wash away all her shame of being human, while so undeserving of humanity.
This evening, for no reason at all, it seemed to her "that all that had been effaced.
Jacqueline came to Down Street to take Ursula and me out to dinner on an evening when John was away giving a concert. She emerged from a taxi, carrying a little white dog in her arms. Jacqueline gazed upon the house where she had scrubbed floors, peeled vegetables, and accepted the scoldings of her superiors. At last she was free of it! If she wished, she could stick out her tongue to the Captain. She was free, she was wealthy, she was almost married to John.
In the cab, she told us that John was being asked by the government to undertake a month's propaganda tour in Canada. He would leave soon to conduct a series of concerts for hospitalized veterans. Jacqueline was proud of his mission, of his talent, of his glory, but at the same time she was afraid for him. Perhaps at bottom her fear was not for him but for herself. Her happiness was so new that she still could not believe in it; it seemed to her that it was too wonderful to last. A month was so long a time, and John would be far away from her, among other women just as beautiful, even more beautiful than she. Jacqueline smiled in joy over John's glory, but also trembled in fear. Since she could not prevent his leaving, she was busy weaving bonds to assure his return, attaching him to her by a thousand threads. Jacqueline showed us a sketch for a tombstone that she was designing to be placed over the grave of the little French girl whom John had loved before he knew her. During his month of absence, she intended to have this monument built and the grave arranged. It would all be finished just in time for John's return; the dead one would help the living one to draw him back to England.
Was this, at last, love? I wondered. Would I ever love anyone the way Jacqueline loved John Wright?
Did love have to contain this exigence, this ferocity? Would I someday be like Jacqueline, in terror of losing a man? Could you have such ruthlessness toward another person, if you really loved him? Could you accept any means at all, so long as they held him bound to you? Perhaps it had to be so. Perhaps that was what one didn't understand above love, until the experience came.
I tried to compare Jacqueline's feeling to other loves I had witnessed. Ursula had loved. What she had felt for Claude was love. But it had not been so possessive. And I wondered whether what was slowly happening between Ursula and Michel was love. I hoped it was; I wished it for my sake as well as theirs, for I would feel so much safer if I knew that love didn't have to be like it was with Jacqueline.
Jacqueline ordered a meal for her dog, and the waiter solemnly served it alongside our table. She talked about her infant daughter, who now called her "Mamma," and called John "Papa," and could stand erect, and was already trying to take her first steps. Jacqueline still talked as though hers were the only beautiful and intelligent child in the world, and this irritated me, though it was touching at the same time.
Ursula said to Jacqueline, "You remember Michel, the young Polish soldier I used to see, about three years ago? He's back in London again. I had dinner with him."
"Oh, yes?" said Jacqueline politely, obviously not remembering him at all.
"He told me the most amazing things about Palestine. He's going there after the war."
"Oh, yes?" said Jacqueline again. "He's a Jew?"
It was obvious to both of us that she had no further interest in Ursula's friend Michel; her thoughts went no further than John, his fame, his connections. And somehow, when she said, "He's a Jew?" it had been just like slapping Michel.
I thought, for a moment, of saying something. But Ursula was sitting quite erect, looking at Jacqueline with a maturity and self-sufficiency that I had never before seen in her. I thought of Michel's calm round face, and realized what Ursula must have been feeling—that Michel didn't need to be defended before anyone.
After dinner we went to a movie in Leicester Square. Jacqueline insisted on paying for everything, playing the bountiful lady. This was her latest role, and there was something truly touching in her need for people's admiring surprise.
As we entered the theatre we heard someone call Ursula's name. We all turned, and there was Michel. We stood in the lobby talking a few minutes, and Ursula prodded him with leading questions, drawing him out, showing him off. Michel still spoke with diffidence, but nevertheless it could be seen that Jacqueline was impressed by his intelligence.
Two Polish soldiers entered the lobby and recognized Michel. Their faces brightened, and they hailed him joyfully. They seemed delighted at having run into him. It was somehow surprising; one would not have thought that Michel would be popular among the ranks.
When the two soldiers moved off, Jacqueline leaned toward Michel and said with her seductive air, "Ursula says you're planning to go to Palestine?"
There was obviously no subject she could have mentioned that would have pleased Michel more. His eyes grew animated as he described the collective villages of Palestine.
Jacqueline said, "But I never heard of anything like that. It sounds wonderful. And you'll live like that?"
Michel said, "Yes." Then he blushed and added, "If I'm still alive at the end of the war."
We went on into the darkened theatre then, Michel still with us. We were seeing
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
At one moment I looked at the rows of people with their eyes fixed on the screen, their faces lighted by the projection, and somehow the whole scene seemed unreal, as though all of us sitting there were part of some film. It was an odd sensation, and I mentioned it to Ursula later that night as we were getting ready for bed.
"I know," Ursula said. "I've sometimes felt that way too. Sometimes it seems as if every last one of us were playing a part." She sighed. "I wonder if I'll ever learn how to play mine."
During John's absence, Jacqueline often came to take us out—sometimes Ursula, Mickey, and me together, sometimes one or the other of us alone. Mickey was with us a good deal in those days, as her husband had suddenly been sent off on a secret mission. She had no news of him. She continued to live in their little apartment, coming to the barracks only on payday and when it was absolutely necessary to appear at drill.
She had set her heart on the idea that her husband would be back for Christmas. There was a sort of childish hope in her that just because it was Christmas, Peter had to appear.
But Christmas passed, as did New Year's Day of 1944. Peter didn't come back. But one evening a tall blond young man came knocking on Mickey's door, and told her, that her husband was in good health, and sent her a kiss. He said nothing else, and disappeared.
Michel went out often with our little band of women, and sometimes Ann came along, too. It was strange that after our four years of life together, it was Michel who finally became a sort of core around which the little group formed. Before Michel's advent, we had passed entire years together, and yet each of us always felt isolated in loneliness. Now we became a group of close comrades revolving around Michel. Each of us was extremely fond of him, even Ann. None of us—not even Ursula, as yet, was in love with him, and yet each of us loved him. Ann loved him as a wonderfully understanding friend. For Jacqueline he was a revelation—a restful friendship. Mickey loved him as she loved everybody, except that for Michel she had a kind of respect that she rarely had for anyone else, even though she sometimes laughed at what she called his Utopian ideas. I loved him as one of the few truly good people I had ever known in my life—good in the sense that he could do no harm to anyone. As for Ursula, she loved Michel as her salvation. It seemed to her that he had come back into her life to save her, and that without him she was lost.
Michel was good-humored, even gay, and yet he still retained the calmness and timidity that bad been his chief characteristics three years before. He went to a great deal of trouble to give us pleasure, hunting out books that I wanted, finding works on music for Jacqueline, taking Ursula to the movies, reassuring Mickey about her husband. He navigated in Ann's Lesbian circles with composure and naturalness, and he had become acquainted with Claude, who adored him, kissing him on the cheeks and calling him her little boy.
He spoke as little as always, but never was mistaken in his judgments of people. He never permitted himself to be overwhelmed by a personality, and never let anyone throw sand in his eyes. If Claude began to tell some extravagant tale that she herself had ended in believing, Michel simply looked at her with his large astonished eyes, without saying a word, and suddenly Claude would stop her recitation.
I sometimes watched him leaving Down Street with Mickey, Jacqueline, and Ursula. He had the air of being equally fond of all three of them. This was probably the secret of his ability to keep us all together, for he never flirted. For some of us this was a surprise; for all of us it was pleasing, since it was a change from the wartime compulsion that seemed to possess every other man around us. I think that Jacqueline felt a little vexed at the beginning, used as she was to the immediate and complete worship of every man she met. But afterward she found that it was, on the contrary, rather restful to go out with Michel. With him, one could be natural; there was no part to play.
On the eve of John Wright's return, Jacqueline took a train to meet him, for the airfield where he was to arrive was some distance from London. She had had a new dress made. It was of black silk, cut in a low circle around her shoulders, and it brought out the fresh tones of her delicate skin and set off her shining hair. She was breath-takingly lovely. A young officer in the train began to talk to her, devouring her with his eyes.
Jacqueline was so happy over John's return that she even told the stranger whom she was going to meet, and that she was his fiancée. She wanted to shout from the rooftops, "John is coming!"
The young officer asked her if she could get him an autographed photo of John Wright, and Jacqueline promised to send him one as soon as they had returned to London.
Each of these details she remembered later, for each detail became invested with a final significance.
She daydreamed of John, of his handsome lined face, of that savage quality that always seemed to hover about him. Now their life together was really going to begin. It was impossible that John should not marry her. She was certain that he loved her, and now her little girl would have a father in him, a father as fine as De Prade himself.
Before John's departure, he had left a letter for her. "My dearest," he wrote, "if you only knew how much I love you! You have given me back the joy of life. I want you to be happy always. You shall never again want for anything. I shall watch over you, my love, as long as I live. You are my joy." In the train, Jacqueline reread all these wonderful words.
His plane was to arrive the following morning. She spent the night in a hotel, and took a taxi to the airfield in the morning.
Everyone smiled at her. Everyone knew that this beautiful young woman was waiting for the great orchestra conductor John Wright.
Beyond that, Jacqueline remembered nothing.
She saw herself again, waiting in the comfortable little room from which one could see the planes landing.
And then she had found herself in a bed in a hospital. Her head ached, and she could no longer remember anything. But little by little a certainty arose from the depths of her body, a certainty that all was finished, that John was dead.
A doctor came to see her for a hurried moment; he told her that she was young, that she would get over her shock. Jacqueline asked for the newspapers. Perhaps there was still hope. But the debris of the plane had been found at sea, near the shore, and the bodies were scattered and unidentifiable.
Jacqueline returned to London. She didn't go to the house in Surrey, but cut her wrists in the ladies' room of a large department store.
Once more we found her in a hospital. Ursula, Mickey, and I went together to see her. Our presence seemed to help her. We tried to remind her that she still had her little girl, but even as we said it we knew that for Jacqueline it was not enough.
I wondered at the strange fate that seemed to hover over her, bringing repeated disaster, as though some monstrous doom insisted that she pay for her beauty, her charm, her aristocratic background. I felt ashamed that I had sometimes been irritated by her ingrained attitude of superiority. It was only the effect of breeding; she had suffered as much as we had, perhaps more than any of us.
The little house in Surrey was sold by John's wife, and Jacqueline found a job in an office. Once more she placed her little daughter with a family. Jacqueline began to do her own cooking again, and to sew her own clothes, and to get up early in the morning. She went out almost every evening. John was dead, and again she needed a father for her little girl. She would find one, for she was still the ravishing Jacqueline.